The battle of wits from The Princess Bride is iconic. But look at the way Vizzini tries to reason out which cup he should drink from:
Vizzini's presented with a difficult choice, as explained by this Cornell University blog post on Game Theory. The strategy he uses relies on what he feels he can divine about his opponent, believing he can use his keen sense of emotional intelligence will provide a needed clue.
But Vizzini overestimates his abilities. We can learn a little about why from an overview of Daniel Goleman's 5 stage pyramid of emotional intelligence. The base of this pyramid is self-awareness. Athanasios Drigas and Chara Papoutsi have a more detailed study, proposing a nine-level pyramid of emotional intelligence, but the base is still built on self-knowledge.
Since his introduction in the film, Vizzini has shown he's full of more bluster than smarts. The scene's tension and comedy build on his increasing sense of self-satisfaction in his analysis conflicting with Westley's impatience, because he is able to read Vizzini's big talk as a bluff to stall for time.
Another example of self-knowledge leading to a better understanding of others shows up in the big courtroom scene in Legally Blonde:
The audience gets to see Elle Woods building this pyramid in the scene. She begins unsure of her role as a lawyer and how she's supposed to cross-examine someone on the stand. But the moment when Elle connects her personal understanding of perms to Chutney's alibi is when she finds her footing. She braces against what she knows about herself, and pushes off from that to break through the inconsistency between Chutney's recollection of events with the realities of perm maintenance.
Understanding yourself -> Understanding Others
But what if you have a character that's trying to use that emotional intelligence to manipulate others? George Mbithi contests the idea that a person with high emotional intelligence using that to be manipulative is necessarily evil, but also outlines some ways to recognize negative emotional manipulation. For a deep dive into the topic, Nguyen Nhu Ngoc, Nham Phong Tuan, and Yoshi Takahashi collaborate on a meta-analysis of existing studies to determine the connection between emotional intelligence and the ability to be emotionally manipulative.
For an example on screen, Re-Constructing the Psyche walks us through Nathan's attempts to gaslight Caleb in Ex Machina, and how this form of manipulation is built on taking away Caleb's self-awareness and confidence in himself in order to prevent him from seeing how he's being controlled:
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Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link, Ryan Chapman puts forward Wonder Boys as the best onscreen depiction of a writer ever.
What else is inneresting?
Anne Helen Peterson on recognizing when social media doesn't offer you value like it used to.
Jakob Strob shows what some iconic scenes from Ridley Scott's films looked like in the storyboarding stage.
Eyebrow Cinema suggests the use of Nazis as villains in the Indiana Jones films is an act of vengeance against nazism.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
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Post-Credits Scene
